The present invention relates to materials and methods for detection of HIV nucleic acids, in particular to probes and primers for detection of HIV in hybridization and amplification assays.
The genome of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is highly heterogeneous and exhibits a mutation rate on the order of 10xe2x88x924 per base per generation. Combined with the rapid rate of viral propagation in infected individuals, this presents particular challenges for diagnostic nucleic acid amplification techniques which typically amplify a single conserved sequence within a target organism. Although a great deal of research activity has been directed to detecting HIV-1 in hybridization and amplification assays, such molecular assays have so far been limited by their inability to detect all genotypes with equal efficiency. Although a signal amplification system for the detection of HIV-1 type O has been reported, none of the currently available diagnostic nucleic acid amplification methods are able to detect this genotype of the virus.
The present invention provides primers and probes derived from the HIV-1 pol gene which facilitate detection and/or quantification of all presently known genotypes of HIV-1 (A-I and O). A single amplification primer pair according to the invention efficiently amplifies all known genotypes of HIV-1, which may then be detected in a single detection step using the detector probes and primers of the invention.